She hummed, and looked once more over her shoulder.
"Look, Little Matt. You should be proud."
He looked.
The fog was back.
"You should be proud that you know, and the others won't believe me."
Smoke clouds, fire clouds, rolling and tumbling and sailing silently past the station, smothering the town.
He wanted to say something, to ask her how she did it and could she teach him, but he was stopped just in time when Colin hurried into the cell block and grabbed his shoulder. "Come on, pal, I'm taking you and your mother-"
Matt pulled away, and pointed to the window.
Lilla was still singing.
Colin gaped.
Matt tried to hear the words.
The fog slipped through the bars in thick bands and gathered at her feet as if spilling from a cauldron. It pooled and thickened and extended an arm that braided slowly around her calves, her thighs, her waist, disappeared behind her back, and came over her right shoulder. The coil became a serpent that opened its black-red mouth and hissed a steaming wind in Colin's face.
"Jesus," he whispered.
A serpent's tongue of flaming amber licked at Lilla's face; a serpent's tongue of crimson reached out to the bars, and Colin flinched as if scalded.
Lilla's mouth moved, but it wasn't Lilla talking. "Jesus damn, Colin you got no imagination."
Matt's fascination snapped at the sound, and he shuddered. It wasn't interesting anymore, it wasn't fun or exciting-it was too close to the nightmares he'd had just before old Gran was lowered into the sea. He clamped his arms tightly around Colin's waist and pressed his face into his belt, trying to block the old man's voice slithering from the girl's mouth.
"No imagination, boy, you know that, don't you? A terrible shame it is, because it will kill you. No imagination will kill you as sure as I stand here."
A laugh, harshly soft and echoing from a tunnel.
Colin dropped a protective hand to hold Matt hard against him.
The voice deepened and grew harsh. "Oh, I got tricks, Colin. I got tricks plenty. One, two, three, four. I got plenty tricks, and you got no imagination, and that gonna kill you. It gonna kill you for sure."
Colin lifted a hand as if to strike at the voice, but the fog-serpent vanished at the beckoning of the wind, and the fog outside vanished as though it had never been.
Lilla strode to the cell door, took hold of the bars and began to push out. Colin hesitated only a moment before thrusting Matt aside and calling out for Garve as he leapt to the door to hold it. Lilla's face was blank; she was gone, nothing there but the dress and the features and the tangled bloodied hair. She pushed, and Colin's cheeks reddened as he hunched his shoulders and shoved back. Garve raced into the block and saw the struggle; he grabbed Matt by the collar, lifted and nearly threw him over the threshold. Matt heard his mother gasp, but he turned around to see.
"Damn!" Garve yelled, and Colin grunted with exertion.
Then, without warning, the bolt snapped and the iron hinges parted as if they were paper. Colin was thrown back against the wall, and the door was thrust to one side, pinning Garve against the bars. Lilla raced out and into the office, one hand snapping against the side of Matt's head and dropping him to the floor. There were lights, and a rushing like the sea, and as he pushed himself up he saw her dodging around the desks while Montgomery yelled, and his mother stood at the doorway with a chair held in front her as if she were warding off a lion.
Lilla shrieked.
Montgomery charged her.
Peg jabbed with the chair, and Lilla swerved to one side, folded her arms in front of her face and leapt through the window.
The plate glass bulged just as the launched herself from the floor, shattered before she reached it, scattered so when she landed she wouldn't lacerate her naked feet. She landed squarely, the momentum slamming her against Colin's car. A brief, too brief second to catch the air back in her lungs, and she spun to her left and raced around the corner. There were no cars. No lights on porches. No sign of the fog as the wind stopped playing with the island and began to gather itself to storm.
And as she ran she saw herself in a cell like the one she'd just escaped-a narrow dirty cell, with a single metal chair, and she was tied to it around the waist by a length of rusted chain. Her eyes were wide, her mouth opened in a single life-long scream, her hands tearing at her dress and hair, while someone beyond her vision slowly closed the cell door. She was screaming. Screaming like the wood-woman on top of Colin's table. Screaming. Mouth bleeding at the corners, nails gouging her chest, feet kicking at the chair legs because they were bolted to the floor.
She ran past the Clipper Run and the houses and the trees, not swerving at all until she came abreast of Colin's cottage.
Heedless of the sharp pebbles that dug into her soles, something nudged her into the center of the street and she followed the white line straight through the woodland until she came to the ferry.
She stopped, not breathing hard, barely sweating as she saw the box of wooden matches clutched in her hand. She stood, the wind sighing angrily in the pines, until the same force pushed her, and she walked down to the slanted deck. The chain was down. The door to the cabin was open and slamming back against its hinges. She looked until she found a small flaking pipe jutting through the floor and out the far side. Turning, she followed it under the deck as though the warped and unpainted wood could not block her vision, followed it to a round metal plate barely visible in one corner.
The ferry rocked, and the gulls overhead began to gather in an agitated white cloud.
The ferry rocked, and the bay raised its whitecaps, and the gulls swooped lower without uttering a sound.
The fingers of her left hand reached into a depression and took hold, pulled, pulled and turned until the scoured metal plate suddenly clattered free.
The stench of marine gas was blown away by the wind.
She lay the matchbox by her foot and tore a length of cloth from her dress, wound it tightly into a makeshift fuse, lowered it into the hole, and soaked it.
Then she returned to the cabin and sat on Wally's stool, her right hand reaching automatically for the red starter. She pushed it, the engine sputtered, coughed hoarsely, sputtered and caught. The ferry strained, her hand moved again, and the boat slipped away from the shoreline.
Rocking, bucking, while she held the wheel tightly.
Then she released the wheel and quickly tore off another length of dress, using it this time to tie the wheel into position. When it was clear the ferry was headed directly for the mainland dock, she left the cabin again and walked to the fuel tank.
She knelt again, picked up the fuse, this time leaning forward until her arm disappeared to the elbow, leaning back to pull the cloth out and lie it carefully on the deck. She started at it, and picked up the matches. She pushed the fuse until three inches of it slipped back into the hole. She opened the box.
She watched the mainland lurching toward her, staring as if she were able to judge the distance to an inch. And when the bottom began rising, the wind stopped, and she struck a match against the box.
She stood and dropped it on the end of the cloth.
It flared blue and sizzled, low timid flames that moved slowly while she turned and hurried back, not running, not looking around.
She reached the far side of the ferry and without pausing, walked off the edge. She didn't feel the water, nor the sudden loss of air. She began swimming automatically, and Wally Sterling's boat exploded.